General Manager and President Glen Sather of the New York Rangers works the phones during the 2009 NHL Entry Draft at the Bell Centre on June 27, 2009 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) (Bruce Bennett/2009 Getty Images)

General Manager and President Glen Sather of the New York Rangers works the phones during the 2009 NHL Entry Draft at the Bell Centre on June 27, 2009 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)(Bruce Bennett/2009 Getty Images)

He sits, mouth working an unlighted cigar like a soother, greyer and heavier at 67 than he was at 37 when the photograph on the wall opposite was taken: Glen Sather, then general manager of the Edmonton Oilers posing with Wayne Gretzky, the teenaged player looking young enough to need a chair for skating.

Jonathan Ericsson #52 of the Detroit Red Wings mixes it up with David Clarkson #23 of the New Jersey Devils at the Prudential Center on December 11, 2010 in Newark, New Jersey. The Red Wings won 4-1. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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"I haven't changed," the now general manager of the New York Rangers growls in a self-mock.

But oh, how the times have.

Back then, he was the genius. It was Glen Sather, former NHL journeyman, who became the Oilers' first GM and told owner Peter Pocklington to do "whatever it takes" to get this young kid from Brantford, Ont., that the experts were saying wasn't big enough, fast enough or tough enough to play in the big leagues.

In his first NHL draft, with Gretzky's services already secured by the team owner, Sather selected Paul Coffey in the opening round and Jari Kurri and Andy Moog in later rounds. He named himself coach and led his young team to Stanley Cups and individual records that may never be matched. He was so brilliant at finding and nurturing young talent that Jack Coffey once said that had his highly-skilled, highly-sensitive son come to any coach but Sather - who encouraged the young defenceman to take chances - Paul Coffey might never have survived the NHL, let alone made the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Thirty years on, however, times have changed. In March of this year, fans held a "Fire Sather Rally" outside his office high over the front entrance to Madison Square Garden. The New York Post called the six-year, $39-million (all currency U.S.) contract he gave Wade Redden probably "the worst free-agent signing in the history of hard-cap pro sports." Redden is playing in the AHL with the Connecticut Whale.

And he sits, smiling, mouth nursing the stogie, content that, as he sees it, the game has happily returned somewhat to a style reminiscent of the glory days of the Oilers, certain that, finally, slowly, he has been turning the culture of this marquee Original Six franchise away from New York Yankees thinking and back, at least to an extent, to the sort of thinking that once worked so magnificently in Edmonton.

When you run the richest team in hockey - a team with a long string of aging superstars brought in at great cost and no result - a salary cap can become a blessing.

After missing the playoffs last spring by a final-game shootout, the Rangers are hanging on with the playoff-bound teams so far, entering their game with the Washington Capitals on Sunday night. And they are doing it with a lineup in which fully half of the players have never played professional hockey in any other organization.

This group includes goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, the jewel of the franchise who arrived during Sather's first Rangers draft. Sather, however, takes no credit for this, pointing out that the late-blooming Swedish star wasn't selected until the seventh round.

"He was an afterthought," Sather admits.

The homegrown nucleus also includes defencemen Mark Staal and Michael Del Zotto, as well as the entire line of Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Callahan and Artem Anisimov, the three stars of an impressive 3-2 win last month over the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks.

The group does not include the team's only other true star after Lundqvist, free agent Marian Gaborik, the swift-skating Slovakian who came to New York from the Minnesota Wild a year ago for $37.5-million over five years. Gaborik scored 42 goals last season but was lost earlier this fall to a shoulder injury and has played in just over half the games.

Improvement has usually been an immediate priority with the Rangers, and has led to some remarkable signings, both in Sather's decade as GM and before - often with disastrous results.

What worked magnificently in 1994 - a veteran Mark Messier delivering a Stanley Cup to New York after a 54-year-drought - turned into an annual series of big-name, big-dollar signings that failed to deliver a second modern Cup. The Rangers signed Wayne Gretzky, Pavel Bure, Eric Lindros, Jaromir Jagr, Theoren Fleury, Bobby Holik and others to often outrageous contracts that produced results from acceptable achievement (Gretzky, Jagr) to disaster. Holik, for example, was merely a good two-way player handed a five-year $45-million deal, ended up on the third line and was eventually bought out by the Rangers.

Sather doesn't shy away from such memories. "The buck stops here," he says of the high-end signings he was involved in, such as Holik. "You can't lay the blame on anyone else."

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